Page 21 of Take Me Home

“I can.” Well, that was gross and terrible.

Unbidden and immediately undercutting his moral authority over a bunch of eighteen-year-old idiots, an image intruded: Hazel striding into the café in one of her Friday outfits. He had pieced together, after several weeks of observation and blatant eavesdropping on her conversations with Cami, that Friday was the day she often taught this professor’s class for him. On those days, she wore black pencil skirts with fancy tops that tied in a big bow at the throat or had sheer sleeves or lace and tiny buttons up the back of her neck. She swept her hair up in a bun and wore glasses, as well as black tights with delicate patterns on them. She was probably aiming for professional and off-limits to undergraduates, but the whole look checked just about every box of the hot-teacher fantasy.

“Guys are dicks,” he said apologetically. “Some of us less than others, though.”

She shoved another huge bite of pancakes into her mouth with a look like,We’ll see about you.“The other issue,” she added, “is that I run into Sheffield’s students constantly. You’d think my office hours were a Disney attraction—just a constant line outside my door for tutoring. A while ago, I extended my hours because I didn’t want Sheffield to think I wasn’t keeping up, andmoreof them came. Then, they’d find me at the libraryor after my lab. Andnow, it’s all over town. The gym, Starbucks, my bus stop. Theyfindme. I know it sounds paranoid, but I’m half convinced they’ve developed some kind of sophisticated system for tracking my movements.”

“They find you,” he echoed ominously, amused. “You’re right. That does sound paranoid.”

Hazel threw her balled up straw wrapper at his forehead. “Just wait until you’re the one at H-E-B buying wine and a cookie cake in your pajamas, minding your own business, and some freshman makes you explain Kohlberg’s theory of moral development on the spot while openly judging your purchases.”

Ash raised his palms at the defiant edge in her voice but did nothing to stop his grin from spreading. “Hence your attachment to my café.”

She raised an eyebrow at that possessive pronoun.

“So, no younger men,” he summed up. “Hey, if you get desperate, you said yourself Frank seems lonely. I bet he’d take you out.”

She watched him carefully, and he wondered if that little fantasy of her in her teacher clothes had been visible on his face.

“I can’t date someone from the café. When Frank and I break up, which we would eventually, I wouldn’t be able to go there anymore. And like I told you, it’s the one place where I can work in peace. Or relative peace, aside from this one obnoxious barista.”

She’d insisted nothing could change between them, coerced Ash’s promise to cede the entire building if this trip made her hate him, and in his desperation for the ride home, he had agreed without really thinking. But now he understood how serious she was about the pact. She had cut out old friends, an ex-boyfriend, her entire hometown. When she left, she left all at once and all the way.

“Well.” His swallow took surprising effort. “In that case, I will dissuade Frank from asking you out. But I’ve seen rom-coms. A lot of meet-cutes happen in cafés.”

“Watch a lot of rom-coms, do you?”

“Four sisters,” he reminded her. “But I guess you probably don’t believe in all that. True love, second chances. You’re already breaking up with Frank, and you haven’t even given him a first chance.”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’tnotbelieve in love. As for second chances, I think people stay longer than they should in most relationships because they see quitting as failing. But if I didn’t believe in second chances at all, I doubt we’d be sitting here.”

“Because…?”

“It’s no secret you didn’t like me in high school, and we haven’t exactly had a better run the last couple months.”

A pang of regret cut through him. Back then, it had been easier to let her think he barely tolerated her than to open himself to her bright smiles, knowing he’d want more of her. He ached to correct her interpretation of all those scowls.

“But here we are,” she continued, steering a bite through her lake of syrup, “having a civil dinner together in the strangest diner in Texas.”

She glanced back through the window, back out at the thickest, most magical snowfall he’d ever seen, and this whole situation, this strange town,seemed like time outside of time. Some entirely alternate reality where the rules didn’t exist anymore. And if he tried to recount any of it to his sisters tomorrow, he knew it would sound as unreal as a dream.

“If this is really a second chance,” he said, “we could actually get to know each other. For real.” The line landed with an earnestness that made his ears burn, so he added, “You know, like, more embarrassing Pug Boy stories or whatever.”

“I can’t believe I told you that. You’re disturbingly easy to talk to.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

She bit her lip, a flash of wariness in her eyes. It triggered his own impulse to guard himself, but he fought the urge.

“I don’t usually dump on people like this,” she said quietly, ducking her chin. “I guess it shows that I haven’t had anyone to—”

He couldfeelhow it unnerved her, to leave the abandoned confession hanging between them. Here, he was supposed to reach for their usual teasing, to lob some borderline insult back, keep them riding the safe surface of mock-hostility. But this tiny admission of hers was real, just like how she felt about her childhood home and all that stuff aboutafters, and he didn’t want to do what they always did.

She narrowed her eyes at his refusal to play along, tugged at her dress. The wide collar slipped down her shoulder again, and whatever she’d reached to say died in her throat as she followed his gaze to her bare skin. Her foot, which had been tapping for the last several minutes, came to a rest. Everything between them sharpened, the soft husk of her exhale, the little dip above her upper lip, his own loud swallow.

He should have disguised the momentary snag of his attraction to her. But that dress. What on earth was the purpose of a dress like that, long-sleeved and cozy everywhere except one delicate swath of collarbone? He couldn’t tear his eyes away, despite feeling like she’d caught him stealing something.

Then, as if in some cosmic admonishment, the restaurant went dark. Through the window, the streetlamps blinked out.

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